


Theme And Variations

by Jacen



Category: Friday the 13th Series (Movies), Halloween (2018), Hatchet - All Media Types, Hellraiser (Movies), Scream (Movies), You're Next (2011)
Genre: Drabble, Final Girl, Gen, Slasher, and because i love final girls, because i love horror, horror movie fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 20:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21287489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacen/pseuds/Jacen
Summary: When the slasher is defeated and one woman stands alone in victory, what comes after?This is what happens when I try to be uplifting.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 30





	Theme And Variations

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I love horror movies, I love final girls, I love slashers and I watched a lot of movies this October. This was supposed to be an essay, or at least a meditation on the stuff a final girl is made of...but someone already wrote that book. Thank you for reading, I solemnly swear this story is unlikely to give you nightmares!

The hotel coffeemaker beeps to signal a fresh pot, dragging Brittany away from her wide-eyed watch on the window. It’s been a week since everything happened, since everyone died, and she’s still not even close to sleeping through the night. Her house is still a maze of police tape. Her school sent her a very large packet of homework and a form letter inviting her to take her finals in the summer. She still hears her mother at the edge of sleep, screaming for her to run, then choking on her own blood.

Brittany ran until she couldn’t. She fought until she was overpowered. When it...no, when he thought she had nothing left, she’d found a reserve of will she’d never had before and it had turned her death into her victory. 

The wounds have healed to the point of being tight and itchy all of the time. Her mind still feels tender and raw. She swigs the coffee black and hot, barely registering the pain amid her exhaustion and upset. 

Focus returns with a knock on the door.

She refills the cup halfway, possibly to drink, possibly to throw. There are two feet and a smaller shadow visible under the door. It could be a cane. It could be an axe. There could be more people in the hall, out of sight. “Who is it?” Brittany calls, getting a good grip on the mug. 

“My name is Nancy.” The voice is high, girlish. It should be instantly trustworthy. Brittany’s knuckles go white with tension.

“I don’t know you.” She steps to the side, gets the TV and dresser on her left, the bed on her right. She can still move if she has to. “Go away.”

The feet on the other side of the door shuffle. “I was sent here by the police,” the woman calls. “I’m…” Panic jolts up Brittany's back when she hesitates a little too long. “I’m like a social worker. For special cases.”

Cameron came up with better lines than that. Brittany’s teeth grind around the sudden crystal clear memory of his hand around her neck, a screwdriver deep in her shoulder. “No one told me you were coming.”

“I asked them not to. I’m just here to leave a card. When you’re ready, or if you need anything, please call me. We want to help.” There’s a breath of silence, then a huff of air. “And I know how that probably sounds to you right now, but we do want to help.”

The card slides under the door. The feet stay a moment longer, then Brittany hears them tap off down the hallway. She waits another fifteen minutes, then uses the coffee mug to pull the card a safe distance from the door.

Nancy Thompson is the name centred on the cream-white cardboard. Underneath, in smaller print, The Strode Agency.

There is a phone number. She stares at it for some time, then tucks it away in her purse.

——

The number goes uncalled for three months because Brittany is perfectly fine, really, until the second she’s not. She’s at the park with her dog, feeding ducks in a pond, when she feels a hand on her shoulder and every muscle in her body tightens. She screams and shakes and is in an ambulance when she comes around enough to recognize her surroundings again.

At the hospital, she borrows a few quarters and dials the number in a post-panic haze. It rings twice, then that same high, kind tone says ‘hello?’.

“I’ve got your card,” Brittany mumbles, her limbs shaking. “I need help.”

“Alright, Okay. Is this Cassie?”

It’s like a punch to the gut, this other girls name, the sudden knowledge that there’s another person out there like her. Someone who needs the same help, someone who had the same visit.

“Brittany,” she rasps. 

“Oh!” There’s a scramble at the other end of the line, then furious typing. “Brittany, we weren’t sure you would get in touch, I’m glad you contacted us.”

“I need help,” Brittany repeats as the shaking begins again. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Can you give me the address of the place you are now? Someone can come and get you within the hour.”

Her teeth chatter as she identifies the hospital. Nancy tells her to wait for someone named Erin in the visitors lounge. She says ‘see you soon’ and hangs up before Brittany can ask any further questions. Shivering with echoes of fear she tucks her feet under her and stares at the clock in the waiting room. Twenty four minutes go by before Erin arrives. She’s an unassumingly pretty girl with a faint accent. Her attitude is all business as she collects Brittany and waits for all of the discharge paperwork to be done; Brittany stares at the edge of a vicious scar just visible at Erin’s collar when she isn’t signing one thing or another. The nurse frowns when they walk out together.

Brittany is still uncertain until they get to the parkade and she notices the way Erin walks towards the centre of the aisle, giving the cars and the spaces underneath them a wide berth. Erin’s eyes flick to each corner, pause on every doorway. Brittany feels the muscle along her shoulders unknot at the total lack of fear in the other woman. Erin is watchful, protective, but not afraid. 

“Did it happen to you too?” The question escapes before Brittany realizes she’s even thinking it.

Erin’s lip curls, not fully a smile. She looks into an alcove, then nods towards a compact car. “Passenger or back seat?”

“Back seat.” The lock pops. Brittany gets in. 

Erin starts the car and has them in motion before she speaks again. “Three years ago. My fiancé...his whole family died. I’m the only one who made it.”

“Oh.” She stops short of platitudes. Erin does not strike her as a person who cares much for pity. Brittany stares through the front window, watching the corners and the people passing by. “How many of us are there?” She finally asks, so quietly she doubts Erin heard.

“A couple dozen.” Erin speeds up the car, takes a sharp left and then a right before resuming her previous speed.

“How?” Brittany flinches at the number-she’d flinch at any number, honestly. “How did this happen so many times?”

Erin’s smile curves without reaching her eyes at all. “People are fucking cunts,” she opines.

Brittany’s smile is far more genuine.

—-

The building is some seventies crime against architecture. It has heavy walls and a straightforward floor plan, with small apartments for every one of its temporary residents. The young women are nervous and suspicious; the older women have an air of readiness at all hours, day or night.

The second of this strange sorority she meets face to face is Nancy, she of the lilting voice from the hotel. She lingers in the front hallway of the facility in anticipation of Brittany's arrival. The cane in her left hand looks solid enough to beat down a door; the welcome and information packet under her right arm is the size of a textbook. She’s white haired in spite of her youth, with eyes like flint. It’s soon clear the cane is only necessary some of the time. It’s impossible not to feel a little comforted by her presence.

She meets Sidney the next day. Like Nancy, she is a counsellor. Like Nancy, she has an air of indomitable composure about her. Unlike Nancy, she does not smile easily. She acts like every minute of trauma counselling is vital, life or death. Her advice is practical. It is comforting to know that someone agrees she should arm herself; the police called Brittany paranoid when she asked for a gun. Sidney’s already got the paperwork filled out at their next session.

Kirsty is an enigma. Brittany does not directly meet her and her fellow residents emphasize that she is very lucky she doesn’t have to. What she sees when she passes Kirsty in the resource room and the library is an intense woman with unkempt hair and wide, staring eyes. Haunted seems too mild a term. Kirsty speaks with one or two of the others, women who seem more shattered than the rest when they turn up to group sessions. Around Kirsty, they are at ease, handing her their therapy notebooks and straightening their backs at the stern nods they receive as she turns the pages. Brittany sees Kirsty smile exactly once. She does not like the look of it.

Brittany gets along best with Marybeth, though practically everyone does. She is the physical manifestation of their collective survival instinct, a cursing, stomping, shouting embodiment of ‘fuck you’. She does not live at the compound but turns up three times a week to sit in Nancy’s group sessions and drawl-yell about how stupid and senseless the world is. She and Erin have loud discussions about shotguns and leg hold traps; therapy sessions with both of them leave everyone feeling proud and strong.

Meeting Laurie Strode is like coming face to face with the personification of granite. She does not live at the compound that bears her name; when one of the residents decides to leave, she comes to deliver a personal goodbye. On Brittany’s last day, Miss Strode is ten minutes early for her exit interview, joining Nancy in her office to shake Brittany’s hand.

“You can always come back,” she instructs. “We will not turn you away. Call any time.” Her stalwart kindness pulls a nervous smile across Brittany’s face. “And if it happens again...we’ll come to you.” The smile drifts away. The conviction in Miss Strode’s voice is reassuring in spite of the message. Brittany is given a hundred thousand dollars and the address of the most secure apartment building in her new town. 

—-

It is a viciously hot summer day two years later when three teenagers are murdered and displayed at a campsite five minutes from Brittany’s new life. She knows the signs, knows Cameron is back somehow. She tries to warn the town, to explain what is happening. Sidney’s calm voice rings in her ears as she is escorted from the PTA meeting

_“People do not want to believe you” _

to the police station

_“And they will do everything they can to deny what is happening”_

where her statement is taken, where the deputies stare at her, slack-jawed with wonder at how insane she must be, where she is told to have a nice night in exactly the tone of condescension everyone mocked so heavily at group therapy.

Brittany considers taking up a weapon, confronting Cameron, protecting the young people who don’t deserve what’s coming for them. She considers leaving, in the vain hope he might follow her and leave them. She considers pills, razors, her gun. 

She calls.

She hopes.

Night falls. There is a single knock at her door. Brittany knows they have sent the best woman for the job, the one who can save these kids and help her put Cameron to rest. Marybeth or Erin or Ginny; she lists everyone she wants to see as she levels her gun at the door and opens it.

The deep, dark stare of Kirsty Cotton is the least welcome face on her list. 

Brittany prays.


End file.
